As is the norm, another founder of a tech giant wants to fix America–this time in the education sector.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has partnered with Raise.me, an education startup, and other organizations such as Facebook to reform the college application process, according to Daily Finance.
Raise wants to improve equal access to higher education, calling it “one of the greatest challenges of our time.” Its approach, however, does nothing to lessen the entrenchment of a tiered higher education system.
Raise partners with colleges and universities to award “micro-scholarships” to students, starting as early as a student’s freshman year in high school. Students create an account, add their high school accomplishments, and accumulate an aid package.
“Once admitted to a college, your aid package will include at least the amount you earned from that school on Raise,” the Raise website says. “Over 100 colleges” have partnered with Raise so far.
Daily Finance reports that schools “see Raise as a way to reach out to students and begin recruiting new college applicants earlier.” Available scholarships for schools vary, but Raise claimed that the average student participant gained $20,000 in commitments last year.
The issue here is that the students who are best suited to use Raise are not students struggling to gain equal access to higher education. Allowing students to gain guaranteed micro-scholarships does nothing to reform the application or funding process for college — it allows students to start the application process earlier.
That might benefit high-achieving students who lack the funds for college, but high-achieving students aren’t the students locked out of higher education. If it catches on, colleges could become more selective and specific about the types of students they want.
A bigger concern is students who don’t excel at test-taking or extracurricular activities that don’t impress college admissions officers, but who could benefit from higher education. High-school students stress enough about classes already. If they know that a mistake freshman year could end their chance at their dream school, they’ll be less willing to take a class outside their comfort zone. Instead of encouraging education and achievement, it could make them more conservative and less experimental.
If anything, Raise encourages the mandarization of higher education that prioritizes personal connections, conformity to certain values, and indicators of a student’s background, not necessarily their ability.
Raise makes the lie of college tuition more transparent, however: Students rarely pay full tuition for school, and those high prices might discourage students from even applying. Colleges price discriminate against applicants with the aid of the FAFSA, which lets them maximize tuition charges based on a student’s ability to pay.
For private universities in 2013, 87.7 percent of freshmen had some form of financial aid at private colleges and universities, according to a National Association of College and University Business Officers study. The tuition discount rate was 44.8 percent; colleges advertise a high price, but cut it almost in half for admitted students.
For public two-year and four-year institutions and private nonprofit four-year institutions, the published price has climbed between 2004-2005 and 2009-2010, but average prices that students pay have declined, according to the College Board.
Price transparency should be a priority, but a Raise approach obscures systemic problems through a technocratic solution. Until colleges move beyond test scores and extracurricular activities for the basis of admission, a more intellectually diverse campus won’t emerge.
